Prof. Hirochika Inoue is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, advisor with the Digital Human Engineering Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo, and an IEEE Life Member. Dr. Inoue has done seminal work on force feedback in dextrous manipulation, real-time vision systems for robots, hand-eye systems, vision guided vehicles, and humanoid robotics. In this video clip, Prof. Inoue explains how he got started doing research in robotics when he entered graduate school in 1965 by choosing to do his doctoral thesis on the automatic control of a bilateral manipulator turning a crank.

Prof. Shigeo Hirose, Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and IEEE Fellow, is renowned for his pioneering work on the design and control of robotic systems. He has created innovative robotic systems that can walk, crawl, swim, skate and slither, bio-inspired snake robots, a "ninja-robot" that can climb buildings, mine detection and removal robots, and planetary exploration robots, along with many other practical robotic applications. In this clip, Prof. Hirose talks about his early inspirations before starting a career in robotics.

Dr. Robert Ambrose is the Division Chief of the Software, Robotics and Simulation (SR&S) Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center, the leader of NASA's agency-wide Human-Robotics Systems technology project, and the project lead in the development of the Robonaut platform, an upper torso humanoid that can be teleoperated as well as work autonomously alongside humans. In this video, Dr. Ambrose discusses what it means to create a bad robot design as he reflects on some of the robots he built early in his career.

Prof. Ray Jarvis is Director of the Intelligent Robotics Research Centre at Monash University, a Fellow of the IEEE, and was Director of the Australian Research Council Centre for Perceptive and Intelligent Machines between 2003-2007. His research interests span computer vision, intelligent robotics, pattern recognition, and image processing, and he has worked on applications in bush fire fighting and related search and rescue, security robotics for public transport terminals, and assistive robots for the disabled and elderly. In the clip, Prof. Jarvis describes devices he built when he was young.